Tucked under the wooden staircase in Karin Sprague’s rustic studio is a small plaque with these words precisely carved on the white stone: “Let your life speak.”
The saying is appropriate for Sprague, one of the few artisans in the United States who carves stone by hand. She specializes in what she calls “the art of remembering,” custom-designed gravestones that speak about the life of the person memorialized.
Sprague, owner of Karin Sprague Stone Carvers LLC, is now working on a tombstone, about 3 feet wide and 2 feet deep, for a woman who loved the ocean. On the front of the stone, a huge wave curls into the shore, full of froth and delicate foam. Most striking is the lettering of the name: The woman had practiced calligraphy. Sprague found an example she had left behind, of her own name, written in fancy script in her own hand, and that is what Sprague replicated to print the woman’s name on the stone for eternity.
Another of Sprague’s works of art highlights the close bond between a mother and son. Devastated by her son’s sudden death, the mother went to Sprague to see what could be done to memorialize him. The son’s upright gravestone features an arch, where at the exact time of the son’s birth, sunlight streams through, illuminating a name etched on a flat tombstone set into the ground in front of it – the name of his mother who will lie beside him someday.
For Sprague, designing gravestones is a mystical experience. “Stone carving is a spiritual practice,” she said. “I call it the art of remembering.” She will sit down for hours with the loved ones of a person who has passed on. “I listen. I ask about how [the deceased person] lived life, what they loved. I ask the family to bring photos. I really try to get a sense of what the person’s purpose in life was,” she said.
She considers this process her “ministry of listening. It’s the connection I feel in helping people get through the grieving process. I don’t shy away from their suffering and their grief,” she said. “The ability to really listen and lean into their pain, that is my work.”
Sometimes, the people who will be memorialized are still alive when they come to see her, perhaps diagnosed with a terminal illness or simply planning ahead. She estimates that she is one of about 12 artists in the nation who still carve gravestones by hand, an art that dates back thousands of years but is rapidly disappearing. Sprague figures that “99.9 percent” of all tombstones today are mechanically made, offering patrons a limited choice of shapes, lettering and designs that are unique to no one. “It’s like picking out a cake,” she says dismissively of the machine-made stones. No computers are used in her work, no machines either.
Sprague, 44, refuses to discuss prices she charges clients out of concern for their privacy. She works with apprentice Stephen Federico and fellow stone carvers Tracy Mahaffey and Adam Heller.
Her artwork can be found in cemeteries “from San Francisco to Block Island,” she said. The stone for the woman who loved the ocean is bound for Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, N.Y., a place created as a garden and considered one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the country. This will be the second Sprague work at Green-Wood. She prefers to call cemeteries “outdoor museums.” Sprague is careful to adhere to any protocol that an “outdoor museum” might have, sending letters of introduction to the caretakers of cemeteries where her work will be on display to see if there are, for instance, height requirements or a specific type of stone that must be used.
She estimates that she and her fellow artisans at her studio create about 20 gravestones a year. It can take six months to a full year to create a custom gravestone, where each indentation, each letter, each swirl, each frame, every angel’s wing is painstakingly and most patiently chiseled by hand. •
COMPANY PROFILE
Karin Sprague Stone
Carvers LLC
OWNER: Karin Sprague
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Hand-carved
gravestones
LOCATION: 904 Tourtellot Hill Road,
Scituate
EMPLOYEES: 3 contract workers
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1991
ANNUAL SALES: WND
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
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